Thomas Macbride

Though he was president of the university for only two years, Thomas
Macbride served the campus for more than a half-century as a scholar,
conservationist, and administrator. The building that bears his name
was constructed in 1904 as the Hall of Natural Science and was renamed
in his honor in 1934.

Macbride received the Bachelor of Arts and, in 1873, the Master
of Arts degrees from Monmouth College in Illinois. He joined the
University of Iowa in 1878, becoming a professor of botany in 1883.
In 1902, he was made head of the Department of Botany and served
as secretary of the faculty from 1887 to 1893.

His love for the outdoors and its preservation inspired him to become
the first president of the Iowa Park and Forestry Association, organized
in 1901. He founded the Lakeside Laboratory at Lake Okoboji in northwest
Iowa and promoted the development of state parks, including the lake
and park that bear his name in Johnson County, north of Iowa City.

Macbride was born in Rogersville, Tennessee, on July 31, 1848. He
married Harriet Diffenderfer on December 31, 1875, and they had four
children. He died in Seattle, Washington, on March 27, 1934, at age
85.